404 errors on non-existent URLs

[AJ234]

Hey guys and gals,

First Moz Q&A for me and really looking forward to being part of the community. I hope as my first question this isn't a stupid one but I was just struggling to find any resource that dealt with the issue and am just looking for some general advice.

Basically a client has raised a problem with 404 error pages - or the lack thereof- on non-existent URLs on their site; let's say for example: 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas'

Obviously content never existed on this page so its not like you're saying 'hey, sorry this isn't here anymore'; its more like- 'there was never anything here in the first place'. Currently in this fictitious example typing in 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas**'** returns the same content as the 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels' page which I appreciate isn't ideal.

What I was wondering is how far do you take this issue- I've seen examples here on the seomoz site where you can edit the URI in a similar manner and it returns the same content as the parent page but with the alternate address. Should 404's be added across all folders on a site in a similar way? How often would this scenario be and issue particularly for internal pages two or three clicks down? I suppose unless someone linked to a page with a misspelled URL...

Also would it be worth placing 301 redirects on a small number of common mis-spellings or typos e.g. 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towles' to the correct URLs as opposed to just 404s?

Many thanks in advance.

[AJ234]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for the prompt response. Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking too- I know its a pretty basic aspect but I just sort of wanted someone to corroborate the process- sorry if it sounded like I was suggesting that just because content never existed there it's a reason not to 404- that wasn't my intention.

Thanks again

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hi,

My understanding of best practices (and what I've always done on sites I've worked on) is that you do want to return a 404 status code on any non-existent URL regardless of whether or not content existed there in the first place. This is your signal to Google/Bing/the world that this is a bad URL. It doesn't matter the reason that URL is broken really, you just want to make sure Google and Bing know that there is no /beach-towels/asdfas page on your site on the off chance they find it or see a link to it.

If you return the exact same content on /beach-towels/asdfas as you do on /beach-towels/ this does open you up to duplicate content issues because now you have two URLs with the same content. Even though there is a slim chance anybody could discover that an incorrect URL returns duplicate content, you don't want to open yourself to those problems if you can avoid it.

I do think your idea of common misspelling is a really good one and one not enough people take advantage of. I've implemented 301 redirects for common misspellings on other sites. I've found it is especially helpful on short URLs people are likely to type in by hand (for example, people will type in greatbeachtowels.com/beach so it would be worth making sure greatbeachtowels.com/baech or /beech have a 301 redirect over to that other page.

Hope some of my answer can help you out. Good luck!

Thanks,
Matthew